Palatino®

The Palatino® typeface family is said to be one of the top ten most-used typefaces in the world. It was first released shortly after World War II and immediately enjoyed widespread popularity. A classical serif typeface, the Palatino design employs a strong, open style that’s highly legible. Very attractive and easily readable, its popularity has spawned a host of imitators.

Designed by Hermann Zapf in 1948, Palatino was originally punchcut in metal, but was quickly adapted for use with the Linotype machine. The typeface’s style and grace is due in large part to Zapf’s own background in calligraphy; it’s named after Giambattista Palatino, a master Italian calligrapher and contemporary of Leonardo DaVinci.

Although it’s based on the humanistic serif designs of the Renaissance, the Palatino design is much easier to read because its strokes are lighter and proportions are relatively larger than the smaller Renaissance letters. This enhanced readability made it an ideal choice for the substandard paper used by newspapers and magazines at the time of its release. It has since developed into a typeface superfamily, with the introduction of different weights, italics, and titling typefaces, as well as non-Latin character and symbol sets.

In 1999, in collaboration with Linotype and Microsoft, Zapf updated the family to include a wide variety of Latin, Greek and Cyrillic characters and symbols. This new Palatino superfamily is one of the few typefaces whose symbol set includes the interrobang. A number of new subfamilies were added as well, including the Palatino Sans, Palatino Informal, Palatino Nova, and Palatino Arabic designs.

Palatino is a highly functional typeface that can be used in in any setting, for any purpose. It’s widely used as a corporate typeface, for advertising headlines and text, as well as other display purposes. Its open counters make it very readable even when used on inferior paper, making it ideal for newspapers and handbills. Its light lines and large letter size keep it very legible even at very small sizes, such as instruction manuals, and it’s routinely used to typeset books. The Palatino design is also widely used on the Internet, and is available as an integral component of many productivity software packages.

Licenses for desktop fonts

A typical desktop font EULA will allow you to install the font on your computer for use with authoring tools including word processors, design tools and other applications that permit font selection. Fonts can also be used for creation of print documents, static images (JPEG, TIFF, PNG) and logos. The cost of a desktop font license is determined by the number of workstations on which the font is to be used.

Licenses for Fonts.com Web Fonts subscriptions

The Fonts.com Web Fonts license provides access to a selection of fonts for use on websites for use with CSS@font-face. Font delivery from our global network is available through all subscriptions – even our free plan. Some plans include the option to self-host, access to desktop fonts, and use of our FontExplorer X font manager and Typecast design application. The price of a plan is determined by its pageview allowance and other features included.

Licenses for mobile apps

A mobile app license permits the embedding of the font into the iOS, Android or Windows RT mobile platforms. Licenses are platform-specific meaning a separate license is required for each platform the font is embedded into. Licenses remain valid for the total operating life of the app and a new license is not required to cover free updates to the app.

Licenses for electronic publications (eBooks)

An electronic publication license can be used for the embedding of fonts into electronic documents including e-books, e-magazines and e-newspapers. A license covers only a single title but is valid for the full operating life of that title. Every issue of an e-magazine, e-newspaper or other form of e-periodical is considered a separate, new publication. Format variations do not count as separate publications. If a publication is updated and distributed to existing users, a new license is not required. However, updated versions issued to new customers are defined as new publications and require a separate license.

Server licenses

Server licenses authorize the installation of a font on a server that is accessed by remote users or website visitors. These licenses are commonly used by Web-based businesses providing goods that are personalized by its users such as business cards, images with captions and personalized merchandise. Users are not allowed to download the font file and the font may not be used outside the server environment. The font may not be employed for a software as a service (SaaS) application in which the service is the actual product and not the means of providing the product.
Server licenses cover a set number of CPU cores on production servers (development servers are not counted) on which the font is installed. The license is valid for 1 year.

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Awards

The Type Directors Club awarded the 2007 Type Design Competition to Palatino Sans and Palatino Sans Informal in the Type System/Superfamily category. The 2008 Type Directors Club award for Text/Type Family was awarded to Palatino Arabic.